[HPforGrownups] Re: Villain!Dumbledore (was: re:HatingDH/Dementors/...Draco/.../KeepSlytherin Ho

[Random832]

No: HPFGUIDX 177775

> Prep0strus: And the hat doesn't just say ambitious - it
> says 'will use any means', which is a much more dangerous and
> frightening description.

Not a bad description of Dumbledore, though; do we know what house he 
was in?

> That bigotry and racism are something built into
> the house.

And into society - once it's the government's "line", almost everyone, 
except for the Order of the Phoenix and a couple schoolkids and recently 
graduated Gryffindors, takes it up enthusiastically. It's actually a 
fairly compelling moral message, about the danger of society at large 
falling into that sort of pattern, but it falls flat when you think of 
it as a "slytherin thing" - but I have no doubt that, to run with the 
Nazi analogy: just like most rank-and-file german soldiers and ordinary 
citizens, many wizards were unable to recognize their own culpability 
for "just following orders".

> There is more to the house than 'ambition and cunning', and even if
> that were all there was... there's still a paucity of admirable
> traits.  JKR goes out of her way to show the kind of ambition and kind
> of cunning she means when she talks about Slytherin.

Actually, I think what she does is show what she thinks of ambition in 
general, that is...

>  We see those
> types of qualities used appropriately in other characters.

...I don't believe for a minute that she sees the twins or percy as 
"ambitious" - she thinks "ambition" is a negative quality, and won't use 
that word to describe anything positive.